Package: fcitx Version: 1:4.2.7-2 Severity: normal One of the design philosophies in Debian is that packages should generally "just work" when installed. At the moment fcitx does not do this: if you install the fcitx package, no input methods are included. Hence a default installation does not work.
(I mentioned this in bug #708149, but I think the question is worth raising as a separate bug. ibus has the same problem, I filed a parallel bug #708847). Of course fcitx does not know if you want Korean, Japanese or Chinese input (or which version of them). Nevertheless by pulling in no method, it appears to a dumb casual user as though fcitx is just broken. I think it would be better for casual users if some input methods (the most common input method of each language) were installed by default, unless the user specifies a specific one. It is useful to make a comparison with xserver-xorg. xserver-xorg installs all video drivers via xserver-xorg-video-all, unless a user specifies a specific one (which provides xorg-driver-video). The xserver-xorg dependency is Depends: xserver-xorg-video-all | xorg-driver-video. By analogy, all that needs to be done is to add to fcitx Depends: fcitx-input-method-common | fcitx-input-method Each fcitx input method (fcitx-googlepinyin, fcitx-hangul, fcitx-anthy, etc) then Provides: fcitx-input-method. And fcitx-input-method-common is a simple dummy package that depends on selected common methods (it's a separate debate which ones should be recommended for each language!) The patch is essentially non-invasive I think. The outcome is that fcitx becomes more accessible (more useful) to casual users who are not in need of one specific input method. It's easy for me to generate a patch for you, let me know if that would be helpful. Cheers, Drew Parsons -- System Information: Debian Release: jessie/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 3.8-2-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_AU.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages fcitx depends on: pn fcitx-bin <none> pn fcitx-data <none> pn fcitx-modules <none> Versions of packages fcitx recommends: pn fcitx-config-gtk | kde-config-fcitx <none> pn fcitx-frontend-all | fcitx-frontend-fbterm <none> pn fcitx-ui-classic | fcitx-ui-light <none> ii im-config [im-switch] 0.21 Versions of packages fcitx suggests: pn fcitx-m17n <none> pn fcitx-tools <none> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org